Short Story Collection

Dune - Story #2

"Dune!" a young man with long blond hair yelled. Dirt was scattered across his face and military uniform, making the green and brown camouflage a shirt of mud and grime. A long crude tear was made diagonally across his chest, and scarlet began to seep into the edges. "Dune!" he yelled again.

A golden dog came prancing over, panting happily and awaiting orders. He licked the man's face, scraping of a layer of dust from his face to leave a pale streak.

He spoke again, his voice strained and weak. "I want you to go find a stick and bring it back to me. C-Can you do that bud?"

Dune barked a yes and licked his face yet again and began to trot away.

"Wait."

The dog stopped and ran back, leaning over his owner and trying to decipher emotions.

"I-I want you take this." The man leaned forward slightly from his place in the red sand, wincing at the slight movement, and pulled a dog tag from his neck and strung it around the dog's. He held the pendent in his hand, quickly looking over the inscription that read: Henry James - #305

The dog tilted his head as if to ask Why?

There came no answer, but instead a strained and shouted command. "Run Dune, run! And don't turn back!"

That was the last thing he spoke as his body fell back. Tears streamed from his eyes as began to slowly turn back white and expressionless, not to utter a word again. But still, a last hope was remembered till the end: A hope that his dear dog would never see him dead.

The earth rumbled under the pull of wind, forcing sand to rise and fall, covering the body to fulfill a last wish.

Dune ran. He ran as his legs ached and sand was stuck to the creases in his paws that would likely never be removed. He ran as the sun set and a brilliant storm of stars began to reveal itself in the night and ran still as the sun began to greet the sand with a new heat. He ran until he reached an oasis in the endless pool and waves of sand where he stopped and drank quickly- a goal still in the forefront of his mind. And when his thirst was quenched he stood and ran to a low hanging tree limb and plucked a small branch from its arms.

And then he ran again. He ran a sun rise and star-fall and a sun rise again until his fur was slick with dirt and the place where he had once saw his friend was near. Here he stopped and trotted over to the mound, unable to bark with the branch in jaws, and sat. The scent of his owner was still fresh, but gone, as if he had left to go to some place he did not know.

But he will come back. He will come back for his branch. He will come back for me, the dog thought.

So he waited by the mound of dirt for his friend. He waited a thousand lifts of the sky and a thousand fall of the stars until he too became weak and dust overcame his body- the small stick forever clenched in his jaws as he waits for his master.